At times in Christian thought, the priorities of pure doctrine and passionate mission have been perceived as opposites on a spectrum where emphasis on one results in neglect of the other, but without one, the other is deficient and doomed to crumble. Mission without doctrine is like a body without a skeleton, but apart from mission, doctrine is like dry bones in a museum. A Lutheran Reformission maintains a dual emphasis, resulting in doctrinal missions as well as missional doctrine.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

This week's article for the newspapers answers a question about fasting among Christians:

Q: What place does fasting have in
Christianity? How and why would a
Christian fast?

Fasting—the practice of reducing or
ceasing the consumption of food for spiritual reasons—takes on a variety of
forms, both among Christians and non-Christians. While the term fasting has sometimes been
used metaphorically to speak of abstaining from any number of things, it
historically refers only to food. The concept also includes the idea of hunger,
so it is not merely to refrain from a particular item while indulging in an
equal or greater quantity of something else.

Probably the most well-known example
of fasting among the world’s religions is that Muslims fast from all foods
during daylight hours one month of the year.
Another method of fasting, engaged in by many communities of Buddhist
monks, is to eat a single meal prior to noon, then to fast for the remainder of
the day.

Fasting in the Christian tradition
actually dates to before the time of Christ, as fasts were common practice for
the Old Testament people, and the Pharisees, who lived at the time of Jesus,
fasted two days a week—on Monday and Thursday.
Many Jewish Christians continued to fast two days a week, although on
Wednesday and Friday, during the first centuries of Christianity.

Perhaps the most familiar form of
fasting among present-day Christians is Lenten fasting, where Christians fast
to varying degrees from simplifying their diet, to giving up meals on a certain
day or at a certain time of day, to even a full 40-day fast which imitates what
Jesus endured while He was tempted in the wilderness. In fact, the name for Lent in many languages
is often related to the word for fasting.

Jesus addresses fasting two times in
the Gospel of Matthew. On one occasion,
a question is raised of Jesus about why His disciples do not fast. He replies, “Can the wedding guests mourn as
long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the
bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.” From this, it appears that Jesus’ disciples
did not fast during His earthly life, although some did later, as seen in the
book of Acts.

The other occasion on which Jesus
addresses fasting is in Matthew 6, when He instructs that those who fast should
do so quietly, not telling others or looking miserable, but rather to keep
their fasting between God and themselves.

Jesus does not give any instructions
how often or how intensely His followers ought to fast, though, nor do the
other New Testament authors. In fact, no
text of the New Testament ever commands fasting of any kind as mandatory for Christians. This is one characteristic that is unique to
Christians regarding fasting. While
fasting has a strong history in Christianity and there are occasional
references to it in Scripture, it is never required of Christians.

In fact, fasting is never to be given
credit for advancing a Christian’s status before God or earning them anything
from God. It cannot earn salvation or
merit any kind of blessing from God for the Christian. Instead, Christian fasting is a practice used
to build discipline by removing distractions or using hunger as a reminder of
our Spiritual poverty before God and the needs of less-fortunate neighbors.

In addition, the Christian who is not burdened by the necessity to prepare and
consume food will then have additional time to devote to prayer, and because
they have reduced their expenses for food, they are free to give greater gifts
to benefit their neighbor who suffer from poverty or offerings to further the
Church’s mission of proclaiming the Gospel.

So it is that Christian fasting is
not mandatory, nor is it a method of compensating for sin or gaining status
with God, but rather a beneficial exercise which a Christian might choose to
perform for the sake of devoting Himself more fully to Scripture and Prayer and
the assistance of his neighbors.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

My article for this week's newspapers answers a question about the accusation that Christian holy days were imitations of pagan festivals:

Q: Is there any validity to the
claim that Christian holy days like Christmas and Easter were borrowed from
pagan festivals, or that religious leaders designed them to replace pagan
festivals?

These accusations have taken several
shapes over the years. The least
accusatory of these claims assert that Christians created new holy days to
replace the pagan festivals of the people who had converted in new lands. More aggressive versions claim that the
Christians simply recycled the pagan festival by making them about Jesus, but
using the same traditions as the pagan festival and giving them new
meaning.

The most offensive of these
accusations construct a scenario in which the authors would have us believe
that even the person of Jesus and the events of His life were lifted from
previous Egyptian or Middle Eastern religious systems rather than being genuine
historical events.

This most severe accusation is the
simplest to answer. The first people to
make such claims were two 19th century authors named Gerald Massey
and Godfrey Higgins. Prior to their
assertions, there is no evidence that anyone had ever drawn these
connections. Additionally, there is no
evidence that early Christians had access to any information about Egyptian
mythology in order to imitate it.

In addition, there is ample evidence
to the historicity of the events of Jesus’ life and that His disciples began
teaching and believing the familiar teachings about Jesus’ life, death, and
resurrection during the generation who witnessed His crucifixion. This evidence comes from both Christian and
Roman historical documents. When putting
the events recorded in the Gospels about Jesus on an even playing field with
any other event or person of the Greek and Roman world, we find that the
evidence relating to Jesus is superior both in quantity and consistency.

Regarding the proposed links between
Christian holy days and Roman or other pagan festivals, we find that the
evidence is similarly lacking. No
accusation of these links existed during the times contemporary with their
initial celebration by the churches, but only arose, like Massey’s and Higgins’
assertions, only in the 19th century.

In fact, prior to the reign of
Emperor Constantine around 313 B.C. the Christians were well-documented to
avoid all things Roman rather than to imitate them. So, since we have documented evidence that
Christmas was observed by the churches at least a century prior to this date,
it certainly would have caused enough controversy if Christians were imitating
the Roman Saturnalia what we would have record of it, which we do not.

Instead, we know that the Church has
observed the festival of the Annunciation (Jesus conception when Gabriel
announced Jesus coming birth to Mary) on March 25 since very early times,
making it only logical to celebrate his birth 9 months later – on December
25. This is done not because anyone
believes Jesus was born then. In fact,
most evidence would indicate his actual birth was in another season of the
year, but this is ritual time that enacts Jesus life and its events in the
course of a year, rather than celebrating the literal date of events.

Likewise with accusations that Easter
was an imitation of a festival to the goddess Oestre, because of the similarity
of names and common time of year. The
weakness of this accusation is that it is only the English-speaking world that
uses the word Easter to refer to the day we celebrate the Resurrection of
Jesus. The rest of the Christian world
uses terms related to Resurrection or Passover in their names for what we call
Easter. In addition, Resurrection Sunday
was a well-established festival of the Church centuries before Christianity
ever reached the English-speaking world.

It is often said that every legend
and false understanding has some grain of truth at its core, and that grain is
this: In lands where Christianity was
being preached for the first time, people were often attached to the seasonal
festivals and traditions that were related to their former gods. In order to alleviate anxiety about leaving
behind their former rituals, Christian pastors often pointed people to the
already-existing Christian ceremonies that occurred around the same time of
year, as an outlet for their natural desire to gather in communal celebration
of common faith.

Lutheranism is more than a cultural identity or a denominational label. In fact, this cultural and institutional baggage may be the primary obstacle in Lutheranism’s path.

To be a Lutheran is not dependent on a code of behavior or a set of common customs. Instead, to be a Lutheran is to receive Jesus in His Word, Body, and Blood for the forgiveness of sins in the Divine Service; and to be bearers of this pure Truth to a broken world corrupted with sin, death, and every lie of the devil and man’s own sinful heart.

While the false and misleading ideas of human religious invention are appealing to sin-blinded minds, they fail when exposed to the realities of life. It is tragic when souls are led to confusion and despair because of the false religious ideas with which they are surrounded. The Biblical doctrine taught by the Apostles and restored at the Reformation holds answers which are relevant regardless of time or place and offers assurance of forgiven sins and eternal life who all who believe its message.

I am a husband, a father, the pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Burt, IA, and track chaplain at Algona Raceway.